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Being a Business Advisor
The Bucks Enterprise Business Advisor : A case study by Peter Banner
Without good quality advice and support, new businesses are less likely to survive and prosper. Business Advisors carry with them a vast array of skills and experiences and can help either in a general way, such as increasing sales, improving profitability and identifying needs or in specific ways such as strategic formulation, new product marketing and quality assurance.
Bucks Enterprise offers a free, confidential and impartial service to anyone wishing to start his or her own business. Many of Bucks Enterprise Advisors have hands-on experience of starting and running their own business, others, from the private sector, have management backgrounds and their professional expertise spans accountancy, engineering, retailing and food technology.
I joined the agency about 8 years ago, shortly after retirement. I was keen to undertake voluntary work, one or two days per week, where I could offer my knowledge, skills and experience.
Becoming a Business Advisor does require training and over a 6-month period I attended courses that led to membership of the professional body, the Institute of Business Advisors.
Bucks Enterprise operates from offices in High Wycombe and Aylesbury. Clients come from all walks of life and with many different business propositions. Some have well-established businesses and want to grow, others for specific advice or starting up. The Business Advisors help them all.
The Office books our appointments and each one-to-one session lasts for about an hour - there can be up to 4 in a day. It is an exciting challenge to hear their “story” and to help clients clarify what they think they need!! Occasionally, we seek to discourage a client from becoming self-employed if it would not work out to his or her benefit. We count the acceptance of such advice as a success, quite as much as the success in helping in the establishment of a new business. What is best for the client is what drives the first session. Our client satisfaction level is running at 93%, which is above both our target and the national average.
Bucks Enterprise also offers its clients a mentoring service. This is an on-going, long term business counselling relationship between a Business Advisor and a client that potentially covers the whole range of the client’s business as that business develops.
As a Business Advisor, I do not provide solutions to clients’ problems, still less implement those solutions myself. I help the client to identify a range of possible solutions, consider the merits of each one and decide which is the most appropriate. I am acting in a counselling or coaching role rather than truly advisory role. The strength of this approach is that the client owns the solution and gains confidence in coming to that decision.
Because the nuts and bolts of setting up a business are common to most new businesses, Bucks Enterprise runs a Business Start-up Course for intending entrepreneurs; this covers suitability for self-employment, legal issues concerning business, business plans, marketing, selling, bookkeeping and staying afloat! The course is offered in eight half-day modules and is heavily subsidised. Some modules are presented by our Business Advisors, others by experts brought in from outside.
Skills built up as a Business Advisor and Mentor have enabled me to discharge roles such as mentoring clients of The Prince’s Trust, advising small enterprises in Ukraine and Bulgaria under the British Executive Services Overseas scheme (now run by VSO) and tutoring a workshop on business plans and funding in Ghana for the West Africa Business Association.
For more information about using the services of Bucks Enterprise or becoming a Business Advisor, please contact Bucks Enterprise on
Tel: 0845 6034013
Email: startup@bucksenterprise.co.uk